A Michelin-trained chef, a trial lawyer and a corporate sales professional walk into a kitchen … No joke, but the punchline is Park City gets a new doughnut shop.
Chef Jeff Mahin, attorney Rick Nemeroff, and sales executive Leah Erickson have teamed up to bring a fine-dining ethos to one of the simplest, most nostalgic foods around. Chomp Donuts & Coffee is opening this month in Kimball Junction, promising “simplicity, served fresh” with a side of high-level hospitality.
Their vision: doughnuts and coffee crafted with the care of a Michelin-starred kitchen, priced for everyday indulgence, and served in a space designed to welcome everyone from preschool teachers to billionaires.
For Mahin, who’s been in the restaurant business for over 25 years, the project is about blending two worlds — the precision and hospitality of high-end restaurants with the accessibility and joy of a neighborhood doughnut shop.
“This idea of small-town community, and then being able to bring a hospitality that you would see at a French Laundry, at a good Ritz Carlton, but in a doughnut shop — that’s what we’re trying to do,” he said. “We’re in this pursuit of perfection.”
At Chomp, the process will also be part of the experience, the owners said. Doughnuts and coffee will be prepared at a window where customers can watch the mixing, cutting, laminating and glazing happen in real time. Transparency, Mahin explained, isn’t just a design choice — it’s a philosophy.
The shop is also investing in details that might surprise customers expecting a simple grab-and-go spot. An imported espresso machine from Italy — one that’s never been used in the U.S. — anchors the coffee program. A small easel sign near the counter will announce the roast date of the beans, never older than two weeks. Milk comes from a local dairy, while European-style high-fat butter, Madagascar vanilla beans and cinnamon sticks from Mexico all make their way into the recipes.
The menu will feature several styles: 24-hour yeast-raised doughnuts, shell doughnuts filled with house-made creams and curds, classic cake doughnuts, fritters, and even a northern California-style old fashioned — Mahin’s favorite. The flavors they have planned are designed to balance nostalgia with refinement.
“The recipes that we’re doing are recipes that I worked on at the Michelin star level,” Mahin said. “Seasonal doughnuts will be a big thing as we get into seasons, pumpkin, apple cider doughnuts. I can’t wait for peaches to come back into season.”
Mahin isn’t alone in his pursuit of doughnut perfection. Co-founder Nemeroff, a trial lawyer now turned entrepreneur, brings decades of high-stakes problem solving to the business.
“A lot of places just open a store and they hire some high school kids and say, ‘sell doughnuts’’ or ‘make some coffee.’ We are taking an entirely different approach,” Nemeroff said. “The way we want to be seen is super important, and the way we want to interact with customers is super important. So it’s not as simple as ‘anyone can do it.’ We want people to do it at the highest level so that it matches the quality of the food.”
Nemeroff, who has lived in Park City for more than 16 years, said the shop is meant to serve as a bridge between locals and visitors, offering a welcoming space for everyone.
“Park City is a unique spot. It’s not a small city anymore,” he said, joking of days before stoplights. “I think we’ve kind of fallen into this, us-vs.-them, one-or-the-other kind of place. You’re either a tourist or you live here. We want to be for everybody. We make no distinction.”
That community-first approach extends beyond the counter, a value Nemeroff plans to lead. Chomp will offer discounts for educators and first responders, collaborate with local organizations like Live PC Give PC, and donate any few leftover doughnuts to police stations, hospitals, firehouses and even delivery drivers working late-night shifts.
Customers may also see collaborative flavors, said Mahin, with Chomp inviting local restaurants and businesses to suggest ideas that the team will develop, test and feature for a few weeks at a time.
“You tell us the flavors you want. We’ll then spend a week working on it,” Mahin said, explaining that it’s designed as a win-win opportunity. “(Maybe) people have never heard of your restaurant. They’ve now heard it.”
Nemeroff added: “It’s kind of a bizarre concept, when you think about it, that we want to help all the businesses here. We truly are taking the rising-tide-lifts-all-boats approach to this.”
So how did the idea for a doughnut shop even start?
Nemeroff, Mahin and Erickson had toyed with the idea of opening a food business for years. And one day, sitting around a kitchen island with a box of doughnuts, they realized the bar for the pastries wasn’t very high. So they just started brainstorming.
“The energy was just palpable,” Erickson remembered.
Mahin had experience opening the brand Do-Rite Donuts & Chicken in Chicago — which eventually became five doughnut shops — with a fellow chef. It seemed Park City needed something of its own.
For the chef, the mission of doughnuts is personal. Mahin said his culinary philosophy underwent a shift after his realization that the most meaningful meals weren’t necessarily the most complex.
“When I was living in England, I was working at this restaurant called The Fat Duck. … I had this epiphany one day that we’re doing these $700 meals, doing this experience for people that was either a once-in-a-lifetime or once a birthday or once a New Year’s experience,” he said. “It was really fun, but this ego of trying to create food was for me or for the chefs. It wasn’t for them.”
The inspiration for Chomp is rooted in something much simpler — a memory of late nights in his youth, skateboarding behind a small-town doughnut shop and being handed warm doughnuts straight from the fryer.
“It was such a nostalgic memory to me,” he said. “The whole point of making food isn’t to win awards, isn’t to win James Beard, isn’t winning stars. It’s to make people happy. And I think there’s no other food in the world that makes people as happy than a fresh doughnut.”
Nemeroff shared a similar return to simplicity in his own life, explaining that his work as a trial lawyer eventually became less about people and more about business as his career advanced.
“As with all things, the more successful you get, the more you wind up on the business side and less on the actual practical side,” he said. “I wanted to get back to something where I am making a difference, and I want people to be happy to see me.”
For Erickson, the project was less a career shift than an extension of her love for hosting.
“I love hosting dinner parties anywhere from like four people to 30 people. We have dinner parties at our house all the time,” she said.
She now leads Chomp’s catering and events program, which will include custom doughnut walls, creative displays and in-house delivery.
“Outside of brick and mortar, we have catering and events part of the business, and then also a delivery part of the business,” she said. “Rather than utilizing DoorDash or Uber Eats, for quality control purposes we’re going to be doing in house delivery. … We want people to have the same experience that they would have in the shop through delivery, too.”
For all three, Chomp isn’t just selling doughnuts — it’s selling an experience. The shop will feature indoor seating, an outdoor patio and even a lawn where customers can use provided picnic blankets. To-go boxes are sturdy, bright blue and designed to hold in the heat so doughnuts can be enjoyed minutes or hours after they’re made. Staff are empowered to treat customers as if they were owners themselves, sometimes even giving away doughnuts when they sense someone could use a lift.
“We’ll never tell anyone no,” Mahin said.
The partners say Chomp is designed to be both flagship and prototype: a perfect first shop that could eventually expand.
“Open store one. There will be a store two, but there will only be a store two if there’s a store one, and store one must be perfect. It is our flagship,” Nemeroff said. “If there’s demand, which we fully expect there will be, we will follow the demand. But we’re also not getting over the tips of our skis just yet.”
For now, their focus is on serving Park City one doughnut at a time — it’s just that simple.
“You leave happy. You leave with a different positivity than you came in with. And you don’t really even have to know why. It’s just part of what we’re baking in,” Nemeroff said. “Our special sauce is the totality of the experience, is what we’re trying to go for.”
Chomp Donuts & Coffee will celebrate their grand opening with a ribbon cutting with the Park City Chamber/Bureau on Oct. 10, and their website, chompdonuts.com, is set to go live that day. To keep tabs on the hours, flavors and store opening, follow their Instagram @chompdonuts.
